Collaborative design is often billed as a tranformative technology that can overcome the traditional limitations of doing business globally. That’s what my friend, the CIO of a shoe company, thought. But he hadn’t yet met a person I call John Henry Hwang.

The original John Henry was a low-wage laborer who worked on railroad tunnels in the South after the Civil War. Those big strong men used pile drivers and hand drills to make holes for dynamite. According to the legend of John Henry, some clever salesperson (some say it was a manager) tried to put him out of a job by bringing in a steam-powered drill. Henry challenged the drill to a race. In the shale of those mountains, a strong man like Henry could, and did, outperform the drill, though Henry died in the attempt.

John Henry Hwang (not his real name) is a modern day Chinese version of the legendary John Henry, who has so far outperformed a stereolithography (STL) machine. Have you ever seen one of these? It can take a virtual 3-D image from a software package such as Catia and put out a colored 3-D model made of plastic. The STL machine divides the 3-D image into thin layers and makes the model by laser printing layer after layer of plastic.

Slick. And apparently useful at my friend’s shoe company. Here’s why. Right now, the shoe designers produce hundreds of designs for each season. The designs are sent to China, and the Chinese manufacturer’s John Henry Hwang makes a 3-D physical model from a design. Six weeks later, the models come back, the muckety-mucks get together and the final products are chosen.

What if we could just use the STL machine? We could save six weeks and who knows how much modeling cost, my CIO friend thought.

The Challenge

The CIO called a company that leases STL machines, and, serendipitously, it had a 3-D model of a shoe sitting around its office. The CIO got the model?and in one of those rare moments, about which you brag to your spouse?walked into the president’s office and plunked it on his desk.

The president’s reaction was the kind you like to come home and brag to your spouse about. If you’re thinking, "Wow. That’s great. Get on it right away," you’ve got the gist of it. (The CIO’s wife almost certainly got a somewhat longer version.)

When the CIO walked the model around to the various division managers, their reaction was also positive.